Ok, so I just stole my buddy Jordan’s latest Blog entry headline, but I don’t think the addiction my circle of friends are experiencing right now (at least the Canadian based ones anyway) can be summed up any better.
The only way you wouldn’t have heard of “Facebook” by now is if you have had your head buried in the sand… but lucky you if it was on a nice tropical beach somewhere. Yes, it is essentially another of those “social network thingies” just like the grotesque “MySpace” and the new up and comer “VIRB”, but there’s just something about Facebook that sets it apart from the others. A quick “Facebook 101” courtesy of good old Wikipedia:
Facebook was originally developed for college and university students but has since been made available to anyone with an email address. People may then select to join one or more participating networks, such as a high school, place of employment, or geographic region.
As of February 2007, the website had the largest number of registered users among college-focused sites with over 18 million members worldwide (also from non-collegiate networks).
Facebook is the number one site for photo sharing, ahead of public sites such as Flickr, with over 6 million photos uploaded daily, and is the sixth most visited site in the United States.
In 2006, with the sale of social networking site MySpace to NewsCorp, there has been talk about the possible sale of Facebook to a larger media company. Zuckerberg, the owner of Facebook, has said that he does not want to sell the company and denies rumors to the contrary. He has already outright rejected offers in the range of $975 million, and it is not clear who might be willing to pay a higher premium for the site. Steve Rosenbush, a technology business analyst, suspects Viacom.
In September 2006, serious talks between Facebook and Yahoo took place for the acquisition of the social network, with prices reaching as high as $1 billion. In October, after Google purchased video-sharing site YouTube, rumors circulated that Google had offered $2.3 billion to outbid Yahoo!.
It’s fair to say then, that the site’s pretty popular.
So here’s how my theory goes. Sites like MySpace where you are constantly bombarded by spammers, hackers and wannabe muso desperados, have always been open to anyone which, in my opinion, has resulted in a HUGE membership base that produce some pretty mindless content. Facebook is certainly not immune to the same sort of dribble that I am loosely referring to, but it was developed by a Harvard student for otherUniversity students to use to interact online. Let’s face it, the level of intelligence and therefore intelligent content was there from the get-go.
Privacy controls are far tighter, you aren’t bombarded by mind numbing “bling” graphics and other sensory abusing elements on user profile pages, and as far as I can tell so far, there’s not a single issue with spamming or hacking… yet *touch wood*.
Like Jordan covers in his post, I too have managed to hook up with a whole bunch of people I thought I had lost touch with. It’s been great, and after a year or more of being on Facebook I still don’t ever find myself shaking my head in bewilderment at the random morons who send me “friend requests” out of the blue with no explanation as to who they are or how they found me, just as I did everyday on MySpace.
Anyway enough of my ranting, do one of two things right now… if not both:
- Go read Jordan’s reliably well written post on the subject. He covers it all beautifully.
- Sign up at Facebook now and see which former acquaintances you can connect back up with yourself.
Again – apologies for stealing your Blog entry title Jords. At the very least this will give us a bit of an idea who is pulling more weight with Google rankings once both our pages get picked up! Ha!
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